The second time I saw the movie I noticed that Carol said "this fuel cell has been removed" (or replaced or whatever) rather than "the fuel cell..." etc. Given the size of the torpedo versus the cryocannister I'm assuming that the torps each have more than one fuel cell.

That said, this aspect of the plot is rather a mess once you start asking questions.

My guess is that they were never going to be fired anyway. My bet is Marcus felt that Kirk wouldn't launch them and they would be used as leverage... Which I think is what Marcus really wanted. Fuel or no fuel does not matter Kahn turned-over once he knew the count.

Yeah, the missiles were the oddest part of the story (which is bad considering they were also crucial).

At first, I thought maybe Marcus was giving Kirk the missiles having put Khan's people in them as a way of getting rid of them after Khan went rogue. But that's too convoluted to make any sense at all. Especially taking care to put them in still frozen and alive.

It turns out, anyway that Khan put them there, himself. So maybe it was a way of getting them onto the Vengeance, where those missiles were probably intended to go in the first place. Seventy-two Trojan horses. Once they were there, Khan would find a way to board the sparesly crewed ship before the missiles were fired and revive his friends (if Scotty could run around the ship undetected, Khan certainly could get aboard and find a way to revive his people). Khan and his people would then take control of the Vengeance. That meddling Kirk getting the missiles was not what Khan believed would happen. There are problems with this premise, too, but it makes some sense.

The final problem is there are exactly 72 missiles. What a convenient number. Wouldn't that raise eyebrows among Marcus's people? Did they coincidentally order 72? What if the initial order was for only 64 missiles? What if there were 84? What if only 50 had been loaded onto the Enterprise?

They said Carol was a weapons expert (good change of profession from TOS to STID) but shes not perfect. She's not Spock.
I think Khan's so good he just modified the uber destruction photon torpedoes to not only hold a human plus all their cryogenic gear plus a fuel cell and uber explosives.
I think Adm. Marcus got possession of these torpedoes, examined them and determined that they could still be used to blow up things even with Khan's crew in them.
Then he instructed Kirk to use all 72 torpedoes to blow up Khan. Not only would this kill Khan but he would also kill Khan's family by using his invention against him. So Marcus would get his vengeance for the destruction of London's Section 31.

I was just wondering how much extra space is in these photon torpedoes anyway to fit a whole human in it and still work.
In TWOK was Spock's coffin placed in a torpedo or was it a torpedo or was it a coffin just shoved into space?
It still went to Genesis so it probably was fueled. If it was a torpedo then I assume the explosive mechanism was removed

Look, if Khan made it possible for Marcus to build Vengeance and these super torpedoes and it's clearly implied that he did - what sense does it make for a shrewd manipulator like Marcus to turn around and kill 72 other potential sources of useful innovation?

"Okay, Khan's gone rogue. Thaw out another one."

Anyway, the idea that he would have put all 72 of them aboard the Enterprise does strain credulity. There are easier and far less risky ways of killing them all, if that's what he wanted to do.

I felt like when Marcus was first explaining the torpedo to Kirk it was implied that were was only one (or at least a small amount). Even the lines with Scotty make it seem like there aren't a lot of torpedoes. I assumed this would be some sort of genesis device nod.

Yeah, that whole aspect of the plot didn't make a lot of sense and really there's no explanation that works well. (If Kirk just went and fired the torpedoes what would have happened? Seemingly he would have killed 72 people and the torpedoes wouldn't have exploded?) It was needlessly convoluted.

I do like the idea that they were Khan's way of getting the augments onto the Vengeance though.

You have to question the sanity of anyone that thinks the safest place to keep anyone is in a torpedo The plot of the whole film is pretty ridiculous. It's credit to Abrams that he managed to make it watchable. Hopefully they'll get some proper writers in for the next one though

You have to question the sanity of anyone that thinks the safest place to keep anyone is in a torpedo The plot of the whole film is pretty ridiculous. It's credit to Abrams that he managed to make it watchable. Hopefully they'll get some proper writers in for the next one though

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Meh. It can be explained away. We don't know what his pristine plan was before Kirk got involved. He had to believe those missiles were meant for the Vengeance. He was proabably plotting to take the ship for himself.

Smuggling his friends aboard in topedoes with their warheads intact but unarmed like they were Trojan horses would be the the last thing anyone would think (it is a bit insane, after all), but if he gets on board and revives them, there's no doubt they'd take the ship over, and Khan would be on a rampage with the Federation's newest warship and 72 powerful missiles at his disposal.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, we saw a Class 8 probe - a variant of the photon torpedo used for sensor missions - modified to contain a lifeform. And, we saw that Spock's inert form was sent to the surface of Genesis in a torpedo. So, it's not inconceivable that people could be stored in a torpedo casing.

The final problem is there are exactly 72 missiles. What a convenient number. Wouldn't that raise eyebrows among Marcus's people? Did they coincidentally order 72? What if the initial order was for only 64 missiles? What if there were 84? What if only 50 had been loaded onto the Enterprise?

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It does raise a good question.
There had to be more than 72 missiles initially. Watch the scene leading up to the bombing in London. There's a missile or two in the archive right before the bomb goes off. So, that[those] missile was[were] destroyed. And there were still exactly 72 human-loaded missiles left.

Plus, they had to redesign the Enterprise [somehow, somewhen] to give her 72 launch tubes. She didn't have those in the last movie. How convenient that Enterprise has exactly 72 launch tubes.

All this rewriting and handwaving had to happen just because the writers decided to shoe-horn Khan's backstory into John Harrison's backstory. And TOS "Space Seed" had already established that there were exactly 72 followers of Khan on the Botany Bay.
They could have just not used Khan, and then the 72 number wouldn't have been necessary.
Or they could have added some line about how Khan was only able to save a certain number. You know, something more reasonable, like a dozen, more like the number of followers Khan had left in ST:II.

You have to question the sanity of anyone that thinks the safest place to keep anyone is in a torpedo The plot of the whole film is pretty ridiculous. It's credit to Abrams that he managed to make it watchable. Hopefully they'll get some proper writers in for the next one though

Click to expand...

Meh. It can be explained away. We don't know what his pristine plan was before Kirk got involved. He had to believe those missiles were meant for the Vengeance. He was proabably plotting to take the ship for himself.

Smuggling his friends aboard in topedoes with their warheads intact but unarmed like they were Trojan horses would be the the last thing anyone would think (it is a bit insane, after all), but if he gets on board and revives them, there's no doubt they'd take the ship over, and Khan would be on a rampage with the Federation's newest warship and 72 powerful missiles at his disposal.

Click to expand...

As much as I liked this movie, it would help explain to the average viewer exactly whats going on. Something to the effect of Kahn saying to Kirk how he disrupted his original plan and then heavily imply that he was planning on capturing the Vengence when it arrived on Kronos to kill him.

Yeah, the missiles were the oddest part of the story (which is bad considering they were also crucial).

At first, I thought maybe Marcus was giving Kirk the missiles having put Khan's people in them as a way of getting rid of them after Khan went rogue. But that's too convoluted to make any sense at all. Especially taking care to put them in still frozen and alive.

It turns out, anyway that Khan put them there, himself. So maybe it was a way of getting them onto the Vengeance, where those missiles were probably intended to go in the first place. Seventy-two Trojan horses. Once they were there, Khan would find a way to board the sparesly crewed ship before the missiles were fired and revive his friends (if Scotty could run around the ship undetected, Khan certainly could get aboard and find a way to revive his people). Khan and his people would then take control of the Vengeance. That meddling Kirk getting the missiles was not what Khan believed would happen. There are problems with this premise, too, but it makes some sense.

The final problem is there are exactly 72 missiles. What a convenient number. Wouldn't that raise eyebrows among Marcus's people? Did they coincidentally order 72? What if the initial order was for only 64 missiles? What if there were 84? What if only 50 had been loaded onto the Enterprise?

Click to expand...

I like this explanation.
Although Marcus did not seem to be surprised that Khan's people were in the torpedoes. Maybe he's just a great manipulator.

As I understood it, Khan originally hid his people in the torpedoes with the intention of sneaking them away from Marcus, but then something went tits up between him and Marcus and he thought Marcus had killed them. After Marcus got wise to Khan's plan he stuck all of the torpedoes on the Enterprise with orders to fire them at the Klingons- cleaning up his own mess and starting a war with the Klingons at the same time.

Those things must've had a helluva range originally, as Marcus expected them to still hit Kronos with the human popsicles inside. But as Khan indicated that he at least had a hand in designing the torpedoes, he may have allowed for the the necessary space from the get-go. It doesn't seem like a particularly safe way of smuggling people covertly, but the torpedoes have their own engines, guidance systems and stealth capabilities... so why not? Especially with Marcus looking over his shoulder. A transport ship designed for 72 large crates would likely have drawn suspicion.

I'd imagine that all 72 torpedoes would have suffered surprising guidance system errors and vanished without detonating if Khan had been able to bring his plan to fruition.

If Khan was left alone enough to hide 72 people into torpedoes then why didn't he just wake them up? Surely that would have been a lot simpler.
The explanation that he wanted to sneak them aboard the Vengeance is intriguing. Perhaps he and Marcus agreed to sneak them aboard for some reason before the falling out. Maybe Marcus had some co-conspirators in Starfleet who weren't keen on waking up Khan's crew and Marcus wanted to string Khan along pretending he had snuck them aboard, telling his co-conspirators he had had them killed. Then Khan heard this and did the Section 31 bombing.
I think you'll all agree this explanation is as obvious as the nose in front of your face and required no fanciful fanon from me